The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(112)
Marguerite swallowed. “What guarantees?”
Anne said, “I will undertake to defend your coast if England should ever again come in arms against France. For so is peace fostered amongst all our peoples: I shall make common cause in arms with any enemy of France.
“And,” she added more cheerfully, speaking now to Charles, “I think Maximilien of Austria will be most happy if you would like to take his daughter, Margaret, to wife when she is grown. I shall give you a box of diamonds as a wedding present. And three studs and three broodmares of your own.”
Marguerite said nothing. Charles said, “And if we refuse?”
Anne said, “You may live here, of course, and I shall try to see you comfortable.” A little mischief in her face. “Or, if you like, I shall return tomorrow, with my own councilors and a treaty drawn up.”
They all looked at one another.
“Until tomorrow, then,” said Charles, biting his lip.
“And,” said Anne lightly, “if ever you would like to see Keris, you are welcome as my guests. It is very beautiful.”
“And shall we hunt unicorns there?” said Charles, looking caught.
“No,” said Anne. “Never again. But there are beasts like none other, in the woods of the Lost Lands, that you may see. The border is secure now, and men and women may go between to seek their fortunes.”
Marguerite could not help herself. “Is that what you did? Sought your fortune?”
“I did,” said Anne, and again she shared a glance with Louis of Orléans. “And I found it there, between the sea and the sky.”
Anne turned and walked quietly toward the stairs, ropes of jeweled light streaming along her hair. La Trémoille growled in half-coherent fury and drew his sword. But Louis was faster; he drew his own sword, blue light sparkling along its dazzling edge. He didn’t speak.
La Trémoille set his jaw.
“Put up, for God’s sake,” said Marguerite to the general. And after a long hesitation, La Trémoille returned his sword to its sheath.
Anne said, “A pleasant evening to you all.” She and Louis walked together into the shadows.
Afterword
The life of Anne of Brittany was not very romantic, at least surely not to the lady herself. Crowned at age eleven and put on a throne already tottering under conquest and mismanagement, hemmed in by the warring behemoths of France and England, she was forced at the age of fifteen, despite valiant resistance, to marry Charles of France.
Although she pointedly brought two beds to her own wedding to express her disapproval of the marriage and did her best to bankrupt her husband in procuring her a bridal trousseau, she was married regardless, and Anne of Brittany would spend the rest of her life almost continuously pregnant, trying for the pair of sons who could inherit France and then Brittany and so preserve the duchy’s independence. But stillbirths, deaths in early childhood, and daughters rewarded her efforts, and Anne herself died at only thirty-six, exhausted by childbearing.
Despite this dark history, an air of romance has always clung to the duchess. Her youth when she was crowned, the hints of wit and courage that have crept down through the historical record, her influence on the French court, her marriages to two kings of France—both of whom, it seems, loved her dearly. History reminds us of Anne’s passionate patronage of artists, poets, and musicians, her love for Brittany, and her desire to do right by the realm she inherited. It is impossible to read about this young woman and not admire her.
It is also impossible to read about this woman and not wonder what course her life would have taken had circumstances been different. She was born with her options already narrowing. Her father loved jousts and feasts, tournaments and spending money, but he was not a strong or clever man, and his opponent in France, Louis XI, was one of the cleverest and most ruthless men ever to sit upon the French throne.
France invaded when Anne was a child; by the time of her coronation, the destiny of Brittany was all but fully linked to France.
But a writer of fantasy is always asking what if, and this Breton duchess, a clever woman, valiant, the mistress of an ancient and haunted country, born with a doom already hanging over her, was an irresistible subject. What if everything were different? What if she were a little older when her father died, what if the korriganed—Breton faeries—were real? What if there were enchantments that could be mastered by men, what if Brocéliande was really the haunt of unicorns? For it is quite possible that the suite of tapestries called The Hunt of the Unicorn currently hanging in the Cloisters in New York City was commissioned by Anne of Brittany upon her marriage to Louis of Orléans. These images depict a very beautiful unicorn hunted, defiant, killed, and finally alive and caged. One wonders who the unicorn is supposed to represent.
The fantasy author in me also wonders what would have happened had this young and brave and passionate girl had the power to chart her own destiny.
I took the real history of Anne of Brittany, asked myself these questions, and so dragged a real woman’s life firmly into the realm of fantasy. Anne was eleven when she was crowned, fifteen upon her first marriage. I made her older—about the age she was when, historically, she married Louis of Orléans, who became Louis XII of France. Her sister Isabeau died around the time of the siege of Rennes—I had the child kidnapped into the Lost Lands instead. Anne’s court was large and vibrant, and many of them were in the pay of France. A certain amount of pruning and compressing was inevitable in my fictional version. Louis XI’s eldest daughter, the brilliant regent of France, was, in history, also named Anne: Anne of France. I invite the reader to imagine her confusion at having two Annes, and to understand why I changed Anne of France to Marguerite.